Flaw (Season 16, Episode 2)
Premise: A con man shot in an empty office tower dies with Detective Olivia Benson’s number on his phone, pulling SVU into a case against a mother and daughter who have slipped away from Benson before.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 16, Episode 2
- Detectives
- Det. Joe Fontana (Dennis Farina), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Alexandra Borgia (Annie Parisse), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Lynda Carter as Lorraine Dillon, Estella Warren as April Troost, Mariska Hargitay as Det. Olivia Benson, Ice-T as Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola, Ben Shenkman as defense attorney Nick Margolis
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Chris Levinson
Summary
The Investigation
“Flaw” opens with a con man’s murder: Patrick Sullivan is found shot in the chest on the 16th floor of a vacant office building, his phone showing an unsent call to Detective Olivia Benson of Special Victims, who has never met him. Social Security checks for five people go to his Murray Hill address, and his storage unit holds five elderly bodies in freezers. A nursing home nurse, Eduardo, admits helping Sullivan remove patients with no families after they died so the checks kept coming.
Eduardo, jealous of a name in Sullivan’s phone, leads the detectives to David “D” Glass, a money manager for rap stars. Glass says a woman posing as an SEC agent shot Sullivan during a $500,000 hedge-fund buy-in, and he picks out photos that Benson knows well: Lorraine Dillon and her daughter, April Troost, grifters Benson once pursued without making charges stick. A bar video shows Sullivan alive two hours after the supposed shooting, though, and a shirt rigged with squibs in his hotel room shows the shooting was staged to fleece Glass.
Glass then kills himself, leaving no witness, and the women are about to go free when a .38 matching the murder weapon’s caliber turns up in their apartment. Lorraine instantly takes the blame and calls it self-defense.
The Trial
Lorraine tells the grand jury she had an affair with Sullivan a decade earlier and shot him in a struggle after April revealed he had molested her at 14. The judge excludes the fraud evidence unless McCoy produces documents naming Lorraine or an eyewitness. When Lorraine testifies, McCoy treats her as that eyewitness and grills her about the scheme, which she denies.
Sensing he has lost the jury’s sympathy, McCoy gives April’s cross-examination to Borgia. April concedes Sullivan never attacked her when she confronted him, then says they were lovers, that Lorraine killed him out of jealousy, and that her mother invented the abuse and had April hit her to create bruises. Lorraine erupts and later insists April was the shooter, but McCoy refuses a manslaughter plea, and the jury convicts Lorraine of second-degree murder.
Spoiler, the ending: Benson suspects April played everyone and kept the $500,000. Lorraine’s ex-husband reveals he sent April, pregnant at 14, to an ashram in Glens Falls, and its former cook says she gave birth in his car, carried the baby into the woods and returned alone. With no remains to find, the investigators bluff April with a fake discovery, and Lorraine, who has been given 20 years, offers to testify that April confessed to her. April lunges at her mother, then offers to plead to the baby’s death for less time than Lorraine got; McCoy demands a full statement first.
Why it stands out
- The episode wraps up a crossover that opens with “Design” on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
- Mariska Hargitay appears as Detective Olivia Benson, and Lynda Carter guest stars as con artist Lorraine Dillon.
- McCoy gets around a ruling that bars the fraud evidence by using the defendant herself, once she takes the stand, as the eyewitness the judge required.